Anima & Animus

From The Squaresoft Repository

In Xenogears, the anima and animus are two types of organic elements that were once joined together to form part of the electro-organic god Deus. When Deus crashed onto Earth, each anima split from their respective animus. The anima became the anima relics and the animus became the Gazel Ministry. In order for the anima relics to regain their original powers, they must align with their animus counterpart. This explained why the Gazel ministry, being the animus, desired to find all the anima relics. The anima relics were also created with the ability to become weapons of Deus. They empower the Omnigears, without which the latter would become empty, powerless vessels.

The words "anima" and "animus" are Latin for "Spirit" and "Mind" respectively. It makes sense then that the anima relics gave life to the Omnigears and the Gazel Ministry; that is, the animus, are beings that can think and create.

What's more interesting however, is that the terms "anima" and "animus" were also used in the psychological context by Carl Jung.[1]

In Jungian psychology, there are two forms of the unconscious:

The Personal Unconscious: The unconscious that is developed from the experiences of the individual.

The Collective Unconscious: A thing of nature that is morally and intellectually neutral. Jung believed that there exists in the human mind, a type of unconscious that is common to humans. It exists as a substructure of the human mind. Within the Collective Unconscious are archetypes from which our dreams and visions are formed, and myths are derived.

The anima and animus are personalities found in the unconscious. The anima is found in Man, representing his feminine elements, while the animus is found in Woman, representing her masculine elements. Woman, being monogamous, has a few animi, but man, being polygamous, has only one anima. Both the anima and the animus are drawn from the collective unconscious, and are conditioned by the personal unconscious.